“Yes you do,” said Ela. “'Qing-jao is wise and good,' you said.”

“Brilliant and good,” Wiggin corrected her.

“'And I can never be like her,'” Ela went on.

“Let me tell you about gods,” said Wiggin. “No matter how smart or strong you are, there's always somebody smarter or stronger, and when you run into somebody who's stronger and smarter than anybody, you think, This is a god. This is perfection. But I can promise you that there's somebody else somewhere else who'll make your god look like a maggot by comparison. And somebody smarter or stronger or better in some way. So let me tell you what I think about gods. I think a real god is not going to be so scared or angry that he tries to keep other people down. For Congress to genetically alter people to make them smarter and more creative, that could have been a godlike, generous gift. But they were scared, so they hobbled the people of Path. They wanted to stay in control. A real god doesn't care about control. A real god already has control of everything that needs controlling. Real gods would want to teach you how to be just like them.”

“Qing-jao wanted to teach me,” said Wang-mu.

“But only as long as you obeyed and did what she wanted,” said Jane.

“I'm not worthy,” said Wang-mu. “I'm too stupid to ever learn to be as wise as her.”

“And yet you knew I spoke the truth,” said Jane, “when all Qing-jao could see were lies.”

“Are you a god?” asked Wang-mu.

“What the godspoken and the pequeninos are only just about to learn about themselves, I've known all along. I was made.”

“Nonsense,” said Wiggin. “Jane, you've always believed you sprang whole from the head of Zeus.”

“I am not Minerva, thanks,” said Jane.

“As far as we know you just happened,” said Wiggin. “Nobody planned you.”

“How comforting,” said Jane. “So while you can all name your creators– or at least your parents or some paternalistic government agency– I'm the one genuine accident in the universe.”

“You can't have it both ways,” said Wiggin. “Either somebody had a purpose for you or you were an accident. That's what an accident is– something that happened without anyone purposing it. So are you going to be resentful either way? The people of Path are going to resent Congress like crazy, once they all find out what's been done to them. Are you going to be resentful because nobody did anything to you?”

“I can if I want,” said Jane, but it was a mockery of childish spite.

“I'll tell you what I think,” said Wiggin. “I think you don't grow up until you stop worrying about other people's purposes or lack of them and find the purposes you believe in for yourself.”

Ender and Ela explained everything to Valentine first, probably just because she happened to come to the laboratory right then, looking for Ender about something entirely unrelated. It all rang true to her as it had to Ela and Ender. And, like them, Valentine knew they couldn't evaluate the hypothesis of the descolada as regulator of Lusitania's gaialogy until they had told the idea to the pequeninos and heard their response.

Ender proposed that they should try it out on Planter first, before they tried to explain anything to Human or Rooter. Ela and Valentine agreed with him. Neither Ela and Ender, who had talked with fathertrees for years, felt comfortable enough with their language to say anything easily. More important, though, was the unspoken fact that they simply felt more kinship with the mammal-like brothers than they ever could with a tree. How could they guess from looking at a tree what it was thinking or how it was responding to them? No, if they had to say something difficult to a pequenino, it would be first to a brother, not to a fathertree.

Of course, once they called Planter in to Ela's office, closed the door, and started to explain, Ender realized that talking to a brother was hardly an improvement. Even after thirty years of living and working with them, Ender still wasn't good at reading any but the crudest and most obvious of pequenino body language. Planter listened in seeming unconcern as Ender explained what they had thought of during the conversation with Jane and Wang-mu. He wasn't impassive. Rather he seemed to sit as restlessly in his chair as a small boy, constantly shifting, looking away from them, gazing off into space as if their words were unspeakably boring. Ender knew, of course, that eye contact didn't mean the same thing to the pequeninos that it did to humans; they neither sought it nor avoided it. Where you looked while you were listening was almost completely unimportant to them. But usually the pequeninos who worked closely with humans tried to act in ways that human beings would interpret as paying attention. Planter was good at it, but right now he wasn't even trying.

Not till they had explained it all did Ender realize how much self-restraint Planter had shown even to remain on the chair until they were done. The moment they told him they were finished, he bounded off the chair and began to run– no, to scamper around the room, touching everything. Not striking it, not lashing out with violence as a human being might have, hitting things, throwing things. Rather he was stroking everything he found, feeling the textures. Ender stood, wanting to reach out to him, to offer some comfort– for he knew enough of pequenino behavior to recognize this as such aberrant behavior that it could only mean great distress.

Planter ran until he was exhausted, and then he went on, lurching around the room drunkenly until at last he bumped into Ender and threw his arms around him, clinging to him. For a moment Ender thought to embrace him back, but then he remembered that Planter wasn't human. An embrace didn't call for an answering embrace. Planter was clinging to him as he would cling to a tree. Seeking the comfort of a trunk. A safe place to hold onto until the danger passed. There would be less, not more comfort if Ender responded like a human and hugged him back. This was a time when Ender had to answer like a tree. So he held still and waited. Waited and held still. Until at last the trembling stopped.

When Planter pulled away from him, both their bodies were covered with sweat. I guess there's a limit to how treelike I can be, thought Ender. Or do brothertrees and fathertrees give off moisture to the brothers who cling to them?

“This is very surprising,” whispered Planter.

The words were so absurdly mild, compared to the scene that had just played out before them, that Ender couldn't help laughing aloud.

“Yes,” said Ender. “I imagine it is.”

“It's not funny to them,” Ela said.

“He knows that,” said Valentine.

“He mustn't laugh, then,” she said. “You can't laugh when Planter's in so much pain.” And then she burst into tears.

Valentine put a hand on her shoulder. “He laughs, you cry,” she said. “Planter runs around and climbs trees. What strange animals we all are.”

“Everything comes from the descolada,” said Planter. “The third life, the mothertree, the fathertrees. Maybe even our minds. Maybe we were only tree rats when the descolada came and made false ramen out of us.”

“Real ramen,” said Valentine.

“We don't know it's true,” said Ela. “It's a hypothesis.”

“It's very very very very very true,” said Planter. “Truer than truth.”

“How do you know?”

“Everything fits. Planetary regulation– I know about this, I studied gaialogy and the whole time I thought, how can this teacher tell us these things when every pequenino can look around and see that they're false? But if we know that the descolada is changing us, making us act to regulate the planetary systems–”

“What can the descolada possibly make you do that could regulate the planet?” said Ela.

“You haven't known us long enough,” said Planter. “We haven't told you everything because we were afraid you'd think we were silly. Now you'll know that we aren't silly, we're just acting out what a virus tells us to do. We're slaves, not fools.”